Odd Unwrap of "Spring" - Hints appreciated

[Chic Aeon]

So since I was all caught up with "work" I decided I would explore some features I had never used and maybe learn something new. The making of the spring went fine, but unwrapping is very odd. I applied rotation and scale --  and even location LOL during my frustration period.

 

It is acting like it is ignoring the marked seam at the filled circle at the bottom ALTHOUGH the circle fill itself shows up in the unwrap as you would expect.  I have redone the marking of seams and unwrapping a few times. I even tried dividing the spring in half (like cutting it with a saw more or less) and then the same thing happens with  BOTH pieces of the spring ^.^.

 

So any hints on how to get this puppy to unwrap would be helpful. Thanks.

A material is applied already and assigned. I realize I can just use a flat color but I was hoping on a nice Cycles metal shine :D.   

 

I was more or less following the instructions in the first part of this video (with much lower poly count).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkB6nJtiPhQ

 



[DerpWolf]

you can straighten the borders of the single quad (by scaling to zero, S - X - 0 and S - Y - 0), select this quad in UV view, and then go to 3d view - Mesh - UV unwrap - Follow Active Quads.  It will straighten everything if the mesh has uniform topology

[Chic Aeon]

Thanks. I couldn't get that to work but I did something similar by syncing the UV and Edit mode and then aligning the vertices of one quad using the  alignment options in the UV pane which of course (since they were synced) straightened the single quad in the EDIT window. And then used follow active quads and while the map was really REALLY long, it did work and looks like it will bake fine should I ever do something with the experiment - LOL. So thanks for the idea.

 

BUT I would still like to know WHY it wouldn't unwrap as you would expect it to. I haven't seen anything like this that I can remember.

 

So any input on that would be appreciated.

[DerpWolf]

Confusing wording by me, but yes, I meant what you did now. 

Well, I suppose Blender unwrap solver isnt perfect and still can be confused by complex surfaces

[Pamela Galli]

I dunno, maybe unwrap cylinder?

[Aquila Kytori]

Hi

Just to let you know, when i tried the spring unwrapped as i expected it would :



I tried not adding the seams at the end caps or not applying rotation or scale,(when scale was not at one and rotation not at 0°)  Conformal or Angle based ....... messing about manually creating the straighted end parts etc ........... but couln't get that tapering to zero like in your screenshot.

My advice ......... do it again 

 

[Chic Aeon]

Well "damn" LOL.

 

YOURS is what I was expecting. I have no idea why mine was so odd.  I seldom use "follow active quads" (I remember you wrote about that long ago and I did try it) because my things are seldom "uniform". What I would have normally done was just clicked on each line of vertices and aligned to X or Y (both before I was done). This is more time consuming, but I do it so often now I am pretty fast .

 

I will try again and see if it is different. Actually I want to see if I can get the "spring" to follow a more complex shape so that will be a good test.  

 

HMMMMMM.

 

Thanks for the report though. I must have done SOMETHING odd but have no idea what it might have been.

 

[Chic Aeon]

Actually there were certainly ways to "fix" the issue. My question was more WHY .    I pretty much always mark seams and unwrap or use project from view. Very seldom use the other methods. Just habit and likely the things I make also.